Miss, what's my name? New teacher identity as a question of reciprocal ontological security

This paper extends the dialogue of educational philosophy to the experience of beginners entering the teaching profession. Rather than impose the ideas of any specific philosopher or theorist, or indeed official standard, the exploration presented here owes its origins to phenomenology and the use of grounded theory. Working from a narrative data base and focussing on the knowing of name in the first instance, the authors develop their emergent ideas on self and identity in relation to children taught, through connection to a wider literature that includes reference to Giddens, Illeris, Deleuze and Heidegger, for example. The paper is thus also an exercise in suggesting that research on practice by academics working in professional education, who are non-philosophers, can lead to constructive and relevant engagement with philosophy in developing theory from and about about practice, even though the approach, in the initial stages, may well be serendipitous and eclectic in nature

Initial teacher education guideline for teacher educators in inquiry‐based science teaching

This guideline comprises a set of arguments in support of Inquiry‐based Science Teaching, supported by a number of references, apposite quotes and exploratory small‐scale research. The intention is that the guideline will serve as a realistic pedagogy for beginning teachers of science in courses of Initial Teacher Education that, with some experience of teaching and support from tutors at school and university, it can help them to develop a disposition that favours opportunities for pupils to engage in inquiry in one way or another. The text of the guideline will also form the basis of a website that will have a range of links to, for example, video examples of inquiry in action, published papers from research, policy and practice and other sources of advice and ideas

The indicators of pupil opinion and teacher interactivity for inquiry-based science teaching

In order to establish those practices which underpin a science teaching performance that combines pupil enthusiasm and creative classrooms, it will be necessary to uncover evidence of inquiry-based learning experiences in science that can provide a warrant for theory and practice that will assist new science teachers in recognising and developing opportunities for investigative activity. Remaining aware, however, of the recurring theme in contemporary educational research which suggests that learning to teach has an important affective dimension associated with developing relationships and the formation of a teaching identity – a model of development which thus transcends atheoretical checklists of professional standards or pedagogical steps – the nature of that evidence will necessarily be in the area of the formative development of new teachers’ professional knowledge and understanding

Becoming an effective science teacher at the Department of Curricular Studies, University of Strathclyde

In an article for the International section, Allan Blake, Colin Smith and Jim McNally from Strathclyde report on the start of a very important EU-funded project, involving 15 countries, which looks at how ‘inquiry-based science’ can be promoted in science teaching and the significance for teacher education. In their view, inquiry-based science is more about open-endedness and uncertainty of outcome than routine (prescribed) practical work. STE will keep track of this important project and we will report on its progress and outcomes in future issues

Novices helped by tutors and teachers

A comment piece in The Times Educational Supplement Scotland on research undertaken by the authors into the perceptions of support received by students on initial teacher education school placements

Finding an identity and meeting a standard : connecting the conflicting in teacher induction

This article has the apparently contradictory aims of describing a discourse of new teachers that is at odds with the policy-derived competence-based discourse of the professional standard for teachers, but of also seeking to find some points of connection that may help start a dialogue between policy and research. The experience of new teachers is conceptualized as personal stories of identity formation with a clear emotional-relational dimension and a sense of self and intrinsic purpose in which others, especially colleagues and children, are central - themes not visible in the standard. The empirical context is that of new teachers in Scotland but the argument is supported through a wider literature that extends beyond the traditional limits of teacher education, drawing on, for example, notions of self-identity, pure relationship and ontological security in the work of Giddens. Whether a more constructive dialogue can begin depends partly on the extent to which the formal standard can be expected to capture the complex, personal nature of the beginner's experience, and partly on the possibility of research identifying particular areas of competence, such as understanding difference, that connect in some way to the standard

'The Work of Teacher Education' : Final Research Report

Partnership teacher education – in which schools work with universities and colleges to train teachers – works and there is abundant existing evidence in support of this fact. But our small-scale study across England and Scotland shows that it is the higher education tutor who seems to make it work, often at the cost of research-informed teaching and research. The most time-intensive activity for the higher education tutors in our sample was maintaining relationships with schools and between schools and individual trainee teachers. The need to maintain relationships to such a degree is caused in part by the creation of a marketplace of ‘providers’ of teacher education who compete for funding on the basis of inspection and quality assurance data and also by the very early school placements that characterise the English model of initial teacher education in comparison to other European models such as that of Finland

The Skull of \u3cem\u3eSqualus acanthias\u3c/em\u3e

The spiny dogfishes (Squalus) inhabit the North and South temperate zones; they have no anal fins; the points of the small teeth are deflected laterally so ·chat the inner margin forms a cutting edge. Squalus Acanthius is very abundant in British waters and off the Atlantic coast of North America. This group has five gill openings and two dorsal fins each of which is typically preceded by a spine. It reaches a length of four feet, and is a great nuisance to fisherman, eating fish and getting caught in lines or in nets. They are all viviparous. Many Squalidae are inhabitants of deep waters and off the coast of Portugal are caught at depths of 400 or 500 fathoms. The sawfish are closely related to them having the snout produced into a flat blade bearing teeth on either side

New teachers as learners : a model of early professional development

This project was designed to improve the learning of new teachers by developing a research-based, practical model of early professional learning. In addition to detailing the main part of the learning process that statutory standards neglect, the research implies that existing standards should be differentially weighted to reflect the multidimensional development process we have identified. In so doing, we have shown that it is possible to 'connect the conflicting' experience and standard through a more sophisticated recognition of early professional learning

Decentralized investment management: evidence from the pension fund industry

The past few decades have seen amajor shift from centralized to decentralized investment management by pension fund sponsors, despite the increased coordination problems that this brings. Using a unique, proprietary dataset of pension sponsors and managers, we identify two secular decentralization trends: sponsors switched (i) from generalist (balanced) to specialist managers across asset classes and (ii) from single to multiple competing managers within each asset class. We study the effect of decentralization on the risk and performance of pension funds, and find evidence supporting some predictions of recent theory on this subject. Specifically, the switch from balanced to specialist managers is motivated by the superior performance of specialists, and the switch from single to multiple managers is driven by sponsors properly anticipating diseconomies-of-scale within an asset class (as funds grow larger) and adding managers with different strategies before performance deteriorates. Indeed, we find that sponsors benefit from alpha diversification when employing multiple fund managers. Interestingly, competition between multiple specialist managers also improves performance, after controlling for size of assets and fund management company-level skill effects. We also study changes in risk-taking when moving to decentralized management. Here, we find that sponsors appear to anticipate the difficulty of coordinating multiple managers by allocating reduced risk budgets to each manager, as predicted by recent theory, which helps to compensate for the suboptimal diversification that results through an improved Sharpe ratio. Overall, our results indicate that pension fund sponsors, at least on average, rationally choose their delegation structures.Decentralized investment management; diversification loss; coordination problems; fund manager skill; pension funds